THE CANDIDATE IN THE WINGS (original) (raw)

The most important election in the career of Bill Lightfoot, the rising star of District politics, may be the one 75 days from now, and he won't even be on the ballot.

Will the Democrats in the nation's capital choose as their mayoral nominee Sharon Pratt Kelly, the beleaguered incumbent? Or will it be Marion Barry, a convicted drug user trying for the comeback to beat all comebacks? Or John Ray, making his fourth bid for mayor?

If it's Kelly or Barry, Lightfoot's decision is instant: He jumps into the mayor's race as an independent candidate and dashes headlong to the November general election.

But, oh, the agony if it's Ray. The two friends have cut a deal in which Lightfoot has endorsed Ray, which is making for an extremely awkward summer for a cocksure politician who knows -- just knows! -- that he, William Parker Lightfoot, can do the job better than anyone else.

"In the conventional political wisdom, yes, it's a weird place to be, because I should say I think I'm the most qualified, the best candidate for mayor and therefore I should be mayor," Lightfoot says. "How do we best move the city forward? We move the city forward by Mr. Ray and myself teaming together to make change. It is a cooperative, collaborative approach, as opposed to ego-oriented, I'm-the-best."

And if Ray stumbles on Sept. 13? "I'll be ready," Lightfoot says.

The Democratic nomination is pure political gold in a city with as many registered Democrats as Washington has, but if anyone can persuade voters to support a nonaligned candidate, it may just be Lightfoot, a child of privilege who grew up to be a trial lawyer and brilliant courtroom performer and is now at the center of the action on the 13-member D.C. Council.

Charming, glib and not particularly introspective, Lightfoot, at 44, moves and talks with the nimble energy of his old soccer-playing days. Critics say he tries to be all things to all people, that he doesn't do his homework, that he occasionally shades the truth to keep several competing factions happy at the same time. But even they concede what his admirers point out: brainpower, an ability to forge consensus and a knack for getting people to see things his way.

Lightfoot, an at-large member of the council, is the leader of several young political Turks, a racially mixed group with no experience in the civil rights movement that shaped Barry and others. As a beneficiary of those earlier struggles, Lightfoot says his politics is all about commitment and public service.

"I feel like I owe something," says the man whose physician father and homemaker mother paid for his entire education -- an exclusive Quaker school in Philadelphia, undergraduate work at Howard and law school in St. Louis. "I'm where I am today because people sacrificed to give me opportunities. I have an obligation to give something back. Whether you believe it or not, honest to God, I start with that."

He's a somewhat contradictory guy, a millionaire who wears no jewelry and drives a Ford Taurus, a salty-tongued infighter who keeps delicate brass figurines in a fancy case in his law office, an expert on burns and other injuries who'll stop and chat tenderly with the shoeshine lady at the corner of Connecticut Avenue and L Street NW.

And now he wants to be mayor.

"He would be a good mayor," says Joseph Montedonico, a well-known defense lawyer who has gone up against Lightfoot on a number of medical malpractice cases. "As a politician, he is very skilled in hitting issues. He is also -- and this relates in a court case -- very skilled in relating to people and communicating.

"I think he would be very fair" as mayor, Montedonico adds. "He's very practical, he's very bright. I don't think Bill is out for Bill in the way that a lot of politicians are out for themselves. I really think Bill is into it because he thinks he can make a difference."

Lightfoot can be the Great Persuader on the council, a restless figure who breezes into hearings, stitches together a couple of facts and sometimes delivers spellbinding arguments. Earlier this month, during a key session on a master plan for Washington's core, Lightfoot spoke last, framing the arguments for and against a "living downtown" that would include a mix of office space and housing.

"You could see heads turning as he spoke -- it was just like he was persuading a jury," says one council staffer who was disappointed in Lightfoot's vote against the plan. Though Lightfoot swayed no votes that day, "he waited his turn and explained the crux of the issue. He was doing his plaintiff's-attorney thing. You could have heard a pin drop."

Lightfoot often says he could walk away from politics tomorrow and he, his wife, Cynthiana, and their two children, aged 7 and 3, would live comfortably ever after. Last year, according to public records, Lightfoot earned $671,491 in his law practice, about average for him. At a time when there are strict new limits on D.C. campaign contributions, he has more than enough personal wealth to make a strong impression on voters in the eight short weeks between the primary and Election Day.

Some Democratic Party elders are nervous about an independent candidate as wealthy as Lightfoot, who ran well in citywide council elections twice before. Kelly, who will be well funded herself, declined to assess Lightfoot's electoral strength, saying, "Traditionally, most voters view the real contest as the one in September, but I never presume to say what other candidates should do.

"If he thinks he has a reason to run, then that's enough," she says. "There's more hidden strength for me than people appreciate."

Eric T. Washington, the city's Democratic chairman, was more pointed, saying: "I certainly would not want Bill to challenge the Democratic nominee. I think his energies are best spent at this level.

"Bill would be a formidable challenger," Washington adds, "but I don't think he has quite the name recognition that would make him overly viable. I don't think Bill, in a month and a half, can tell people who he is."

Or perhaps even what he stands for. Ask Lightfoot what he would say to a voter asking him that question, and the councilman says: "Depends on who the voter is. I guess I stand for many things."

Lightfoot favors a top-to-bottom overhaul of city schools, which he says is the key to retaining the middle class, which is leaving the District like never before. (He sends his two children to private school.) He favors the "medicalization" of illegal drugs, dealing with nonviolent offenders more as sick people who need treatment than as mere criminals. He wants to build, and build big: A new sports arena. A new convention center. Public works all over town.

Perhaps most of all, he wants the next four years without Kelly in the mayor's chair.

"She is a disaster," he says of the woman who endorsed his first council bid in 1988. "She has taken us right down the tubes. She cannot get the job done. The one thing she has absolute control over is the writing of checks, and she has continued to write checks when there's no money in the bank.

"And you can't blame Marion for that. ... The government is dying."

Rocking the Boat

Lightfoot's in-your-face rhetoric comes naturally to someone who earns his living trying to persuade juries to award accident victims large sums of money as compensation. He has handled some landmark cases and had high-profile clients, including the woman who was badly injured on K Street NW in 1989 when a runaway truck driver went tearing down a sidewalk. She won a $16 million settlement.

He also says the city's dire straits call for a kind of anti-politician who will agitate on behalf of residents.

"I've got an obligation to try and move us in what I consider is the right direction," Lightfoot says. "If people don't think it's the right direction, they should speak out and say otherwise. I've made up my mind not to go along to get along."

The first axiom of incumbency, he notes, is to take no chances, play it safe and keep your seat. "I rock the boat, all right? I think that's my job. I want to rock the boat, damn it. I mean, there are times to rock the boat and there are times not to rock the boat.

"Right now, the boat needs to be rocked," he said. "And maybe some people will fall overboard and somebody else will get in this damn boat."

Lightfoot's love affair with the sound bite sometimes comes off as cherry-picking, grabbing the news media's attention with a clever quote without doing the gritty behind-the-scenes work on complicated issues. When Lightfoot proposed a liquor tax to help pay for a new downtown sports arena (an idea that was dead on arrival), Charlene Drew Jarvis, a veteran pol who chairs the council committee on economic development, took a swipe at her more flamboyant colleague.

"Mr. Lightfoot," she said, "probably ought not to be talking about specific taxes at this point. He is probably out ahead of the council and shouldn't be."

"What you saw in his arena sound bite was very characteristic," says one council member who has worked closely with Lightfoot. "It was a broader indication of a shallowness. Bill is kind of a creamer, who creams good issues without a deep level of commitment -- which is bad if you want to be mayor."

Ron Linton, a Democratic Party elder who is close to Lightfoot, says he has told him, "Don't talk quite as long and do your homework a little better."

"Bill's bitten off a tough, tough job," Linton says. "If he starts running now, he undermines John Ray, and if he doesn't he'll have a standing start."

At the end of next week, Lightfoot will pick up voter signature forms to place his name on the Nov. 8 ballot and the next day he will host a "petition party" at his home in the Takoma section of the District; he says he has 250 people lined up to gather signatures.

He has calculated he would give up 2.6millioninlawpracticeincomeoverthefouryearsasmayor,ajobthatpaysabout2.6 million in law practice income over the four years as mayor, a job that pays about 2.6millioninlawpracticeincomeoverthefouryearsasmayor,ajobthatpaysabout91,000, but is concerned not so much about the money as he is about not being there for his wife and two kids.

"I would love to be mayor, I would absolutely love it," Lightfoot says. "I believe I would thrive. But it may not be the right time in my personal life.

"I mean, I want to run, because I'm committed to it now. But if you ask about my ambivalence or why I don't say, 'Hey, I'm the best, let me run,' then in that case I'd only be looking at myself.

"And this isn't about me."